The Goo 1
Interview Words: Adhamh O’Caoimh ADEBISI SHANK Ad
ebisi Shank got together almost twenty years ago, changed the face of Irish music, got big in Japan, released a string of unbelievable albums through an acclaimed international record label, influenced countless acts foreign and domestic, and then bounced. Kind of a dream trajectory by any standard, if you ask me. Not a word of hyperbole in there. There is an endless string of bands that owe a nod, however begrudging, at the ebullient, off kilter rock that Messrs McCreith, Kaye and Roe put together. Some bands played with them back in the day. Some formed in the time they’ve been away. Almost everyone doing something cool over here has listened to Adebisi Shank. Almost everyone admires them. Even joyless misanthropes like myself can’t help but fist pump during ‘Masa’. You get the impression talking to Vinny McCreith that he’s never once thought about that fact. He’s way more humble than he should be. The man has been at the forefront of the most interesting things happening in leftfield music on this island since I was about fifteen. The recent and rapturously received reunion of a band called Adebisi Shank gave me the chance to speak with the man behind the iconic red mask about the plans going forward, the time gone by and why we are so lucky to see these three shake some hips again. Welcome back. How’s Mick’s UFC career going? Nobody even questioned that. We just threw it in the press release to see if anybody was paying attention. Like the “No brown M & M’s” thing with Van Halen. So nothing to do with why you guys decided to kick the machine back up again? Life. You know? There’s moments as you go through life where you need your mates. We’re better friends now than we 14 were in the band together. So for me, that’s almost our crowning achievement. I saw a lot of our contemporaries fall out in different ways. They were all bands that started around friendship, like ours. Somehow we managed to sidestep that. When we called it a day, we thought ”We’re still friends, and we still fuckin’ love this. Let’s not run it into the ground.” And then in the intervening years… like when I lost my ma a couple of months before Christmas.. at those times, the lads were just there. One day in particular I remember, and remember Lar doesn’t even live in the country anymore, both of them were just there, outside my house. Then later, when we started kinda toying with the idea of getting something together, we did have conversations like “Well, you know, I can do my parts here and send them across.”. The modern way. We don”t have to be all in the same place to work on stuff. Very quickly we realised the whole point of doing this is to be in the same